From the Heart

by Eva Shaw

  “Feds? Police? We are dance instructors.” The couple said in unison. Like peas in a pod, they struck a waltz pose straight from the end of Dancing with the Stars.

  “Give me a freakin’ break. Dancers. You know Petra, don’t you? Are you in cahoots with her?” If that were true, then this wasn’t just one woman’s vendetta against a shady adoption agency. Like, duh.

  Greta pulled a tissue from her pocket. Guess she couldn’t stomach me wiping snot off my face. Heck, if a girl creates a collision with her body, fluids leaking from the nose are hardly worth a second thought. But I accepted the tissue as Drexel said, “Petra, Greta and I, and many others must stop the killing. In Poland, orphaned young women are sold into slavery, underfed and without medical care, and forced to have sex to produce babies. The babies, most in bad health, are sold and resold and then resold again by the PSA and in the name of God, for God’s sake.” Drexel’s hoity-toity Brit accent had turned into a guttural Polish one. He might be a ballroom dancer, but he was frightening at that second.

  “But you’ll do it legally. Right?” I asked. It was like a ping-pong match, with the looks the couple exchanged. “We’re in the United States. We of course have fine legal systems. But were you handicapped and adopted?” Other than the evil-tinged scowl on Drexel’s face and the tears on Greta’s, they looked as normal as a couple could be who had just crashed, bammed, and slammed into a preacher.

  Drexel scowled. “First tell us what your interest is in PSA? Who are you really? Are you one of those fat bureaucrats or some overpaid federal office that doesn’t seem to care about anything except asking inane questions, gathering information never to do anything with it?” He spat into the roadway.

  Point taken, but it didn’t stop me. “I take exception to that well-padded remark, mister. I’m a pleasingly plump, pushy, and prodding preacher, I’ll grant you, but I’m here because I want answers. Hey, can we head into this McDonald’s and stop standing in the blistering sun?” I’d been verbally manhandled before by better stuff than this guy. I turned around and walked into the fast-food joint and plopped into the first booth, my legs suddenly feeling a bit like mush.

  “So you’re from the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I thought so, from your look. And it’s about time you finally made it here after so many of our calls,” Drexel said, glowering over me.

  “Wrong again, Drexel. And sit down. I simply care.” Now it was my turn to growl.

  He folded his frame into the booth and looked down, smoothing manicured hands on the table and flicking away crumbs from the previous customer’s lunch. “Unlike Petra, I am not afraid. My sister was impregnated by a man she hated, had a baby she had to give up for adoption, in Warsaw, five years ago. It’s a sad story, and now she regrets it, as do I. The baby was sold to PSA from the Child’s Play Baby Home.” He spewed out the name.

  Greta came to the table balancing three large cold drinks. I grabbed one. Diet or not, I needed liquids.

  She said, “We know Drexel’s nephew had physical problems. We do not know the extent. Through a private investigator in Warsaw, we found that he was transported to the United States, to New York with one family, and then to a fancy Beverly Hills city near Los Angeles to another family. These were very rich people who wanted to have a playmate for their biological son.”

  Drexel swore in Polish and looked like he wanted to spit, turning to see where the projectile should go, then swallowed. “Such stupid rich people.”

  Greta interrupted, “The Polish people we know here in Las Vegas, who are only a social club, think the boy was rejected and returned to PSA. They lost contact with him when he was sent to the PSA home in New York, an unlicensed orphanage where they keep the disposable children. Then a family in the Las Vegas area put in an order and got him. We have lost track since then.”

  I didn’t know much about blood types, DNA, or anything medical, but I knew who to ask: Captain Tom Morales. What were the odds that Mikel was the child they were search for? In my world weirder things happened.

  Drexel took the plastic straw and twisted it violently. “We have politely—yes, politely—asked your government and the Polish Consulate and so many others for help, for our cause, for the children’s sakes. Deaf ears. What happens to babies who aren’t desirable? The PSA tosses them for the street wolves to devour. The survivors end up in prostitution, drug running, begging on the corners, and living in the subways. Some die. Now our people who are part of the Polish American Club are asking to look at the PSA’s records. Still, nothing comes of it. We have no voice. I’ve been in the States for a year, and we are this close.” He held his index fingers about ten inches apart.

  I asked, “What came of your effort today?”

  “We learned that they’re hiding the fact that the children are disabled.” Drexel stood, smoothing the creases in his perfectly unwrinkled slacks.

  “What will you do with the information?”

  “In order for the adoption of children into the United States, the Polish government has to approve the papers. They believe, I am certain because I love my country and always try to believe the best, that the PSA is helping special babies and children find loving parents. Everyone knows that you people are too rich and have too much money and eat too much. Everyone knows that you buy whatever you want. Including babies.”

  Greta linked her arm in Drexel’s, attempting to smile, patting his hand. “Americans will help correct deformities that Polish families, especially unwed parents, may not be able to.”

  “We’re not all rich, you know,” I replied, thinking of the people I’d met at the Daily Bread Mission that afternoon. Some of those were thankful to get a meal, a bed, and a shower.

  “Now we know this, but in Poland, we did not,” he replied. “Our country is only just coming out of the economic depression caused by your Wall Street. There is so much corruption and abuse of power. It’s happier now than when my parents were alive and when the Soviets held us by the throats, but life is never easy. Now I have told you too much.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Drexel Bendyk and Greta is my bride. We married a few weeks ago. She’s also an actress; she teaches dance and does the early morning traffic and weather report on KTNV, Channel 13.”

  “I thought I knew your face, Greta. I’m happy to officially meet you.” I stuck out my hand.

  “You will help us? Help us find my baby nephew, my siostrzeniec? That is the word for ‘sister’s boy’ in the Polish language. Yes, together we end the tyranny.” He raised a fist in the air.

  “Wait one darned second, m’friend. You’re not looking at a miracle worker.”

  “I saw you with Ms. Cheney. She likes you. She smiles and winks at you. That’s right, isn’t it, Greta?”

  Should I burst their bubble and tell them Delta was putting the moves on me? Greta, thankfully, interrupted. “Her face changed with our questions. But you, Jane Angieski, you can continue to go through the adoption process and find out all you can about the babies, where they come from, and who knows where they end up? This is perfect. It’s the answer to our prayers.” They hugged each other and attempted to reach across to make me part of the group.

  “Hold the phone, folks.” I pulled away and held up my hand. This had to stop. I could not single-handedly stop the human trafficking or the abuse. “Are all the babies imported by PSA deformed or handicapped?”

  “Most. Some just have, how do you say this . . . ” He stuttered as the Polish accent shone through. “Some handicaps don’t show up until the child is older. Like autism and dyslexia. You Americans think it’s the luck of the straw.”

  “Draw? Straw? It doesn’t matter,” I said, and Drexel wrinkled his perfectly youthful and perfectly perfect forehead, looking ten years younger than the face that had recently been yelling at me when we came eye to eye, nose to nose, with only his car’s windshield between us.

 
Greta whispered for our ears only, “Some believe it’s God’s will that they receive a special child; others do not want anything but perfect. They demand flawless babies. So they send back the baby, and PSA sells the infant again. That’s what happened with Petra, you know. She was one of the first to be rejected. This has been happening for fifteen years. Now, as foreign adoptions have become popular, Cheney, that heartless witch, has become more merciless. More babies have died. Slaughtered.”

  The images of babies being neglected and deserted would haunt me unless I did something about it. The mental picture of slaughtered babies had already haunted my heart. I knew I had to do something, but did I want these two to know? I hedged. “Greta, Drexel, let me mull this over, and I’ll let you know.”

  No three ways about it. It was time to call Tom or Officer Christy to find out about Mikel’s limp and what exactly was wrong with the child.

  “Come to Petra’s class tonight, Pastor Jane. Please, and tell us your decision,” Greta whispered.

  WWJD? Even with Jane as the J, it came out the same. It’d be impossible to look myself in any old mirror if I looked away. Hopefully I wouldn’t find myself out of a job, in a jail cell, or forced to date Delta Cheney to get the goods on PSA.

  We said our good-byes, and I rifled in my purse for Tom’s business card. After popping in the numbers into my cell, he picked it up on the first ring. “Morales, here.”

  “Tom? Jane Angieski. I need advice. About PSA.” I wasn’t that surprised when Tom huffed straight into my ear. “Are they breaking laws when the kids offered for adoption are supposed to be in good health, with sturdy little bodies, and they’re not?”

  Tom exhaled, and I swear I could feel it through the cell phone. “Holy moly, Preacher, who have you been talking to?”

  Did he need to know? Rather, I said, “Is the noose getting tighter on the PSA? I went to an adoption introductory meeting, and the photos were of babies and kids who looked normal, nary a crutch or wheelchair in sight. But Delta Cheney nearly went into coronary arrest when one of the couples at the meeting demanded to adopt a kid who has special needs.”

  He inhaled for what seemed forever, exhaled as if he had all the time in the world. “There’s probably some frickin’ fine print in the ‘kid rental and return agreement’ that doesn’t hold them liable if the baby or child is disabled. It’d make my day to get my hands on some of those forms, but it’s too soon in the investigation to subpoena them.”

  “You’re day’s made. I have the forms.”

  “What? Are you at church?”

  “I’m about a half block from PSA and near . . . wait, let me see.” I looked out the window. “Do you know the McDonald’s across from the One Horse Club on Tropicana, about a block east of the Strip? Wait, that sounded like I’m in the club but I’m sitting at McDonald’s across the parking lot from it.”

  “Hold on a minute, Jane, I’ve got to get this other call.”

  So I did and continued to look out a window, which had just been cleaned by a sweating kid dressed in a uniform that needed to be washed. The young man cleaned off the foam, ran the squeegee down the glass, circled it all with a grubby paper towel, and went on to the next window. That’s when I saw it. Pastor Bob’s Lexus, minus the good pastor or Albert Miller, his driver, an arrangement that had come into being with Tom’s help.

  Yes, that was the same Albert Miller who wasn’t to come close to any gambling unless he wanted to go back to prison for an exceptionally long time. The car was smack dab in front of the club’s door, in the zone marked “Handicapped Only.”

  “Jane? You there? Sorry.”

  “I’m here, Tom.” Physically, at least. “Darn it, you jerk, Albert Miller.” I put my hand in front of the phone and grumbled.

  “It’s cutting out. Can you hear me? Stay put. I’ll be there in twenty-minutes, twenty-five at the max, even without sirens.”

  I tossed the soft drink into the trash. Phewy. No man of God gambles. Period. And you’d better put that in italics and underline it, especially when I realized he was doing it in broad daylight, taking along someone who had to steer clear of casinos like I steer clear of more than one trip into the Godiva’s Chocolate Store per mall visit. You probably won’t see the One Horse Saloon and Game Club on any AAA must-visit list, and forget about getting a glimpse of it on the Travel Channel. Dives like that club stay well below the radar so they won’t be cited for patron endangerment by just breathing the air inside. The grubby gaming hall was sandwiched between two low-end day spas, which in Vegas-ese means houses of prostitution, with a tattoo parlor and a cell phone store finishing the block. There was a fake Western boardwalk and hitching post in front of the casino with a railing that was broken on one side.

  I was across that parking lot before sanity reined me in. It was one thing if Ab Normal wanted to ruin his entire life and make Desert Hills Community Church the focus of suspicion and gossip for believers and non-believing folks in a hundred-mile radius, but dragging Harmony’s dad in on his gambling was a shoe of a rotten color.

  A stench like bad meat meets sauerkraut throttled my senses as I pulled at the heavy door. I held my breath. But a girl can only do that for so long; I gulped some air before entering the lair of sweat and sorrow.

  In a Danielle Steele novel this would be a “despicable den of sin,” with the hero there to convert sinners, and he’d probably have a halo around his head. Sure, there’d be sunlight glimmering down, enshrining him in a Godly glow. But this was Vegas, and inside it was even more icky, sticky, and grimy than I thought it could be. If I were doing a docudrama about out-of-luck gamblers and wasted alcoholics, I’d have filmed it at the One Horse Saloon. The varnished wood bar ran the length of the room. Ten or twelve tables sat in the middle. I blinked from the fumes and darkness.

  Oh, yeah, I had one trifling glitch. I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what Arthur Miller looked like other than Harmony’s complaint to Gramps that her dad was, “Gross with that bald head.” Picture this—I was feeling my way into a blackened casino, looking for a bald guy who I didn’t know from Adam. Adam would have been easier to find, fig leaf and all.

  With celebrities, football stars, and everyday guys shaving their heads more often that I shave my legs, you’d think this search for a bald man would have turned up lots of possibilities. Not so. I leaned on the bar and my forearms stuck tight. A layer of arm skin ripped off as I stepped back, and the bartender got closer to my chest than my Wonderbra when I said, “I’m looking for a man.”

  He drooled, wiped spittle from the corner of his puffy mouth, and said, “Yeah, well, I can certainly help you with that, honey. But if you’re working, looking for a john, you’re on your own. This is a poker club. You know, you are a first-rate-lookin’ specimen of a woman. I like ’em plump, mores to hold on to and squeeze, and I gets off at six. That is, unless you’re working, and in that case, I’m not buying.”

  “Thanks. I am employed, but not working in that way. Besides, I’m looking for a specific man, a friend.”

  “That’s what they all say. How about a drink while you’re waiting?” He leaned even closer, but I was hip this time, and me and my Wonderbra moved back.

  “The guy I’m looking for a guy with a shaved head and he’d be with another man, a short, chunky man with hair that reminds you of Elvis.”

  He took a long drag on a cigarette. “Don’t know about the bald dude. But look that way and you’ll see that Elvis hasn’t left the building.” He pointed and, sure as shootin’, Pastor Bob was chatting it up with three of Vegas’s scruffiest.

  “Bingo.” Albert had to be nearby, probably in the toilet, although there were no chips at the empty stop next to my good pastor. Probably because Albert had lost his shirt already, I mumbled to myself.

  I ached to lash out. Have a hissy fit to beat all hissy fits, both at Albert and Pastor Bob and maybe t
he creepy bartender too, just for good measure. I wanted to do them serious bodily harm. What would it accomplish to catch Bob in the act of gambling? What would it do for our church? What would it mean for Harmony’s dad, other than a one-way ticket back to prison?

  I had been batty to come in, and the dim-witted act swept over me like Gatorade on a football coach. Nearly blinded, I now saw a shadow behind the steering wheel of Ab Normal’s car. The head was clean-shaven, and I dashed to the driver’s side and said, “You’re Albert Miller?”

  “Who wants to know?” he grumbled, opening the car door and unfolding his body one part at a time. With each movement, the frown grew deeper. He wasn’t just tall, he was tall, basketball player tall.

  I bluffed and stepped closer to him. He stepped back. I liked that in a man, that he could read that I meant business. “I’m not threat to you. Besides, I’m Jane Angieski.” Nothing registered, a gal can tell. “You know, like Pastor Jane, the woman who is Harmony’s foster parent and her pastor at church?”

  The man grabbed me. Squeezed the breath straight out of my lungs in a crush that would have garnered applause on Wrestlemania. “Thank you, ma’am, I cannot thank you enough for taking in my little girl. You are an answer to all of my prayers. Having you and Harmony together is a Godsend.”

  The squeezing stopped but then he twirled me, which isn’t an easy task. “Ah, Albert, put me down now.” I gulped in what air I could and pushed on his chest.

  “Oops, sorry. Let’s talk in the shade. Thank you and bless you. All those months in jail, I prayed that sweet Harmony would be protected. She shouldn’t suffer for my sins. I don’t understand why you just walked out of that dive. You don’t gamble, too?” He shoved his meaty hands into his jeans and nodded toward the door.

  “I thought I’d find you in there. I saw Bob playing cards.”

  “Losing at cards,” Albert huffed the correction, and smoothed a hand over his bare head, as if he were used to a full head of hair.